What You Love Can Scare You

Reader, I'm scared. I sent off my finished draft. It's not Finished. It still needs work, but for now I've sent it away with its lunch and a little back pack. It will come home soon enough.

Now I should write something else. It's been a long time since I wrote anything else, thought about anything else. I should be happy!

I should feel free to spin stories like sugar. Stories that are too brittle and sharp and sweet. I could write them down and swallow them up and never think of them again, if I wanted.

Instead, I haven't written anything. I've agonized and felt misplaced and dull.

I know that to break this spell, all I have to do is write.

"Write anything!" Curt tells me, with an encouraging smile. "Write about the Hoohobbin Clan. Write about Fluffy. Write about all the characters who never get stories of their own. Just for fun. You can show them to me. I'll read them."

Yes, I think. Of course. Just write—for fun. FUN and nothing more. It's so simple! I nod in agreement.

And then when Curt leaves, I draw sketches and mutter to myself and wring my hands and wash the dishes and do anything I can think of except to write.

The chubby unicorn, the unicorn girl, and me.

Today I won't hide. Today I have a writing prompt from a friend. I'm thinking about going over to the Unicorn Garden for inspiration.

It's strange how the things you love most can also scare you the most.

What the Dragon Said

 I met several cool people last week and one of them is a Maine-based artist named Elizabeth Heller, who makes awesome art such as Victorians Riding Dinosaurs. She recently blogged about Cat Valente's reading last week. In the post she also shared the art she'd made in response to a poem Cat wrote called "What the Dragon Said: A Love Story." 

You can read the post and see Elizabeth's fab art here. I even made an appearance in the post (further confirming my suspicions that the audience at the reading very nicely let me win Cat's ARC. Thank you, new friends!).

So I read the poem and WOW! It's fantastic. It's fun and there are rhymes (I love rhyming poetry, though my poetry professor tried to break me of the habit to no avail), but it's also insightful and bittersweet. It was originally posted on Tor.com for National Poetry Month (April 2012).

I was going to repost it here...but now I'm wondering if that's allowed? Hmmm. I suppose I shall just include the Tor link instead. Read the poem here. Right now. 

Inspired by the poem and Elizabeth's dragon art, here's my own sketch I did this morning for "What the Dragon Said: A Love Story."

I had to crop out my signature to make it prettier. I'm bad at that. Oh well, sketch. Fly through the internet. Be free!

I hope you read the poem. It's not long and it's really really good. 

I'm off to attempt something productive or something creative or something inspiring or maybe just a walk, which sometimes manages to be all three at once.

Spring Restlessness

Well, for starters, I could get to finishing that novel...(every day I get closer!!)

I already reorganized my closet, put away some winter clothes, and began the long, arduous journey that is reading a George R. R. Martin novel (#3 in Song of Ice and Fire, if you're wondering).

Spring makes me want to run around, to wander somewhere, to just smell the earth. The windows are flung open. I will write and reward myself with a walk.

How are you going to celebrate the First Day of Spring?

Also, I think my little gremlin is getting bigger.

Writing is Lonely

Reader, it has occurred to me that I am lonely. Really really lonely.

I'm tired of feeling like my writing is supposed to be both my super fulfilling job and my fun weekend activity. I've decided that just because I'm not thrilled to spend Friday evening or Saturday afternoon writing—not because I chose to but because I have nothing else to do—doesn't make me any less of a writer.

I think it just makes me human.

I know writers are always talking about how they fantasize about being all alone, in a Rapunzel-like tower far away where they could just write and write and write in blissful solitude.

I don't think anyone really wants this. Being alone is lonely. Trust me. And I don't write just because I love words, I write because I want to share stories with other people. Otherwise I would just spend the rest of my life reading.

Swap out writing for reading in that Rapunzel tower fantasy and it starts to make a lot more sense to me. Then again, whenever I finished a book I would want to talk about it with someone. Isn't that the second best part of reading a book? So even reading in total solitude doesn't appeal to me all that much.

The point is: we need people. At least, I do. Maybe it's partially because I'm a twin. There's never been a moment in my life when I was totally alone. I'm happiest in a room or house full of people. It's best if they mostly leave me alone. I just want them near me. But I don't have that right now.

So, what am I going to do about it?

Well, I'm not just going to mope around. I'm not exactly sure what to do, but I'm going to start giving some things a try. For starters I joined the Maine Writers and Publishers Association and I reached out to a poster on the MWPA forum who is looking to start a SciFi/Fantasy writers collective.

It's not easy to put yourself out there but considering that no one has come knocking on my door in the last eight months since I moved to Maine asking to be my friend, I really don't have any other choice.

Here's to small victories on a rainy Friday afternoon. And here's to remembering that sometimes the problem isn't what we're doing or where we're going, it's something else entirely. Like loneliness. Naming the problem is a powerful thing. The first step towards conquering it.

He Followed Me Home

The Tale of the Heartless Robot

A Holiday Sketch For You, Reader

Monster Grump.

Hello, Reader. I've been in a total grump slump since Sunday night. I keep saying I have no idea why, but now that I think about it, it's pretty obvious:

1. I saw my parents for a few hours on Saturday and now I miss them.

2. I'm worried about my family. Most of them live in Connecticut and are currently without power. They are very cold and this makes me sad.

3. There is STILL SNOW ON THE GROUND from the storm over the weekend. I like winter (mostly) but...it's just. I can't. It's too soon! Too soon I say!

4. I'm in a Rivendell chapter in my novel. It's one of those, everyone needs to recover and figure out what the Hell they're going to do now. That's means lots of Conversations and emotional shifts. No exciting chase scenes or zexy, flirtatious scenes or anything else that's super exciting to write. Instead it's all difficult groundwork for the rest of the story and you guys it's soooo haaaaaaaard.

5. There was nothing to eat for breakfast, so I had a couple leftover Hershey bars dipped in peanut butter. Someone save me from myself!!! 

I have yoga class in an hour. Thanks to some show-off, we'll be doing a handstand workshop. I hate handstands. I took dance class starting at seven or eight years old and continued to dance through college. And how did I get into dance in the first place? Because I sucked so bad at gymnastics and every girl in my elementary school did gymnastics.

Basically anytime my butt has to change places with my head, I have problems. Go figure. So this class will either readjust my mood for the better and leave me feeling very zen, or will magnify my grump slump tenfold.

In other news, happy first day of NaNoWriMo. I signed up, but really only so I can reap the benefits of the word counter chart things and all the momentum. I'm desperately hoping to finish my rewrite of The Charmed Bracelet by the end of the year, so that means I need to make a real push through November. If any of you are going to participate, I hope you friend me! I'm JenniferWriter.

Okay, time to head back to Rivendell. The only true cure for a grump slump (for me, anyway) is progress and productivity.